Welcome to Jagalytics
Ok, I’m going to try something new. For years I’ve been interested in Football Analytics - trying to understand interesting things about the game I love, based on data.
Over the next few months, I’m going to aim to write some articles about my team - Partick Thistle - and offer some insights based on what the numbers are saying. I have my own opinions (because I’m a football fan), but I will seek to offer interesting observations based on what the numbers say.
In future, I’ll write a bit more about what I’m hoping to build out, and what my influences are, but for the first attempt, let’s keep it simple: what do Thistle need to do to keep winning?
For context, in the first five games of this season, Thistle averaged 1 point per game in the Championship. That puts you on track to be between 8th and 10th … or as Einstein might put it, very not good.
Thistle were on track for relegation form, despite building a squad many thought should challenge for the title. What was going wrong?
Then in games 5-10, this jumped to 1.6 points per game - which is higher than our average for the last two seasons, and getting closer to the 1.75 per game that Dundee won the league with in 2022/23. It’s still quite far short of Dundee United’s 2.1 from the season before but that was a really skewed league with a lot of money being spent.
So what’s made the difference? Well, of course, there are a lot of of contributing factors, but I want to show one which has helped.
We’ve remembered how to pass to each other.
In the first five games of the season, this is how many accurate passes our players in the average 90 minutes:
Further to the right and a player made more accurate passes per 90 minutes last season, and further up they’ve made more per 90 in the first five games of the season.
Above the diagonal line means you’re making more accurate passes per 90 minutes than last season. Below means you’re making fewer.
I’ve picked out the five players who were above the line in the first five games - only five Thistle players were up at all, with only really Kyle Turner (compared to his loan spell in Kirkcaldy) up on last year’s Championship numbers in any significant way.
Everyone else (and I mean everyone) was down. Some of them a lot. We’d forgotten how to pass to each other. Admittedly quite a few were on low minutes last year or this year, so it’s not significant (for example, these numbers only include one game for Megwa), but Aero and Robinson in particular are quite concerning. Worse passing out from the back, worse passing from a big creator.
So what changed in the second five games?
Kyle Turner is up even more on last year.
Banzo is loads better.
Scott Robinson is more than 30% better than last year.
Dan O’Reilly is passing at the same rate as Banzo.
Megwa is the only player noticeably under last year’s numbers, and really that’s not surprising as he gets used to the team - and he’s so much better than he was.
Thistle remembered how to pass.
That’s not all you need to do in a game of football, of course. But if you can’t pass, you can’t keep the ball. You can’t create chances. You can’t score.
And if only a few players can pass, it’s easy for the opposition to press and force the ball to players out of confidence.
I suspect this is a feature of the team learning one another with some new players in the squad, and new patterns being coached. I’m a big fan of Doolan, and I suspect he is a way better defensive coach than people often give him credit for (which I’m going to look at in future).
But for now, I think it’s telling that players passing better correlates with a big jump in points per game. It’s still a small sample, but I’m hopeful. Do the basics well, and the points are more likely to follow if you’ve got the right players.
And we do have the right players. It’s probably the case that some of the guys are over performing, but I think Turner is ticking, and as more of the players pick up the slack (Banzo, O’Reilly and Robinson especially), that’ll take the pressure off the core players, and it’s more likely that Graham will get more chances because it’s harder for the opposition to know who to target.
Build up is getting better.
I think there’s something about successful running with the ball that I’m going to look at soon too that’s interesting to explore which will highlight some trends with Harry Milne (who was carrying things a lot in the first few games) and Fitzy also being of interest. But we’ll get to that.
For now - Thistle, just keep passing to your team-mates.